Are you selling an end or mean?

I had the pleasure of meeting with a colleague last week to help him with the ‘branding’ of his finance consulting business.

As we walked through his documents, he was leading with some very technical skills, which is very similar to what you see in resumes.

I shared with him the best marketing advice that I had received “Your clients don’t buy your products; they buy what your products do for them”

After another 10 minutes, the document now had all of the items that he could deliver at the top of the page – using terms and language of the client, not a finance person. The second page was his experience/technical skills, revised to use lay person language to back up the first page’s claims.

Now helping my friend was easy for me, because I went through the same transformation of my pitch during my job search. I am sure that I bored several networking contacts to tears with my technical skills delivery. Thankfully for them, I got things sorted out.

Companies are interested in the ‘end’, not just the ‘means’ – so when you read your pitch, use that great advice I got “Companies don’t hire your skills, they hire what your skills do for them”.

Good luck today.


Mark Richards
www.candidateschair.com
Job Search from a Candidate's Perspective - Advice and tools for search organization and networking
Candidates Chair LinkedIn Group:
http://www.linkedin.com/groupRegistration?gid=2328268

http://TwitJobs.co.uk - Jobs Fed Into Your Life